Mary Pierpont Barnum Hogan ’24 died early in the twenty-first century, having lived well into her 90s.  Her obituary noted that she was the great-niece of the famous showman, P.T. Barnum.  In fact, she was his great-great niece, her great-grandfather, Milo Barnum, having been a brother of Phineas T.  (Good nineteenth century names in that family!)  Mary, however, had a host of other connections to famous Americans, both by blood and by marriage.  First among these was James Pierpont, the founder of Yale, who was married to Mary Hooker, daughter of Connecticut founder, Thomas Hooker.  (Emma Hart Willard was also a proud descendant of the Connecticut Hooker.)  Mary Hogan’s grandmother, for whom she was named, was Mary Pierpont Barnum ’66.  The elder Mary was raised by her grandfather, John Pierpont, an influential Massachusetts minister.  Her mother had died, and her father, James, had gone south to seek his fortune.  (Much to his abolitionist father’s disappointment, he fought for the Confederacy.  James’s biggest claim to fame, however, was not his military prowess, but his authorship of “Jingle Bells.”)  James’s sister, Julia, did better for herself.  She married Junius Morgan; their son was John Pierpont Morgan, better known by his initials, J.P.  Mary Hogan’s grandmother’s side of the family–Cowees, Thompsons, and Bontecous–were local Troy people.  Although not nearly as famous as the relatives on her grandfather’s side, they contributed at least five trustees to the Troy Female Seminary and Emma Willard School.  The elder Mary Pierpont Barnum had a great-niece, Jessie Cluett ’86, who married Cornelius Vanderbilt’s great-nephew, Cornelius Vanderbilt Barton. Finally, Mary Hogan’s mother, Antoinette Alden Barnum ’89, was a direct descendant of John Alden of colonial and literary fame.

This one short biography of one Emma Willard student amply demonstrates the way the lives of pupils in this historic school have been woven into the fabric of American history.

The election of 1920 was the first one in which women throughout the United States had the right to vote.  In anticipation of this new opportunity, the editors of Triangle wondered whether or not women would vote independently from the male members of their households and whether or not women would take the time to study the candidates and their platforms and not be swayed by popular opinion.  On election day, a straw poll was held on campus.  Harding won overwhelmingly among both the faculty and the students.  For the next twenty years, this pattern was repeated.  Coolidge, Hoover, Landon and Willkie–Republicans all–won the vast majority of both student and faculty votes in every mock election at the school.  One father wrote to Eliza Kellas right after the election of 1928 that he was proud that his state, Colorado, had joined with New York State in putting Hoover in the White House.  He hastened to note that he would not have presumed to mention politics had she not said something to him in September that led him to believe she was a Hoover supporter.  (He was correct.  Eliza Kellas was an ardent Republican.)

Perhaps the closest brush to the presidency on campus came in January, 1918, when the ex-president, William Howard Taft, visited Troy.  He stayed with the Cluetts, whose estate bordered the campus.  Margaret Cluett, a third grader at Emma Willard, wrote about Taft’s visit to her house for Triangle.  What impressed her most was the girth of the man who holds the record as our heaviest president.  She commented, “Mr. Taft came to our house…and stayed overnight…He was a great big man and was very heavy.  He has a very jolly laugh.”

In 1940, four faculty members voted for the Socialist candidate, Norman Thomas.  There is no record of who they were or how they fared in the sea of Republicans that surrounded them.

In 1922, a day student in the “fourth intermediate” class at Emma Willard (eighth grader in modern terms) wrote an article for Triangle entitled “School in the Year 2000.”  Here’s what she envisioned:

1. “…aeroplanes [sic] will take the place of streetcars.”  Well, the streetcars have vanished from the streets of Troy, but air transportation hasn’t exactly replaced them.

2.  “The luxurious cars of to-day will be out-of-date.”  It’s doubtful she was referring to gas consumption, but it is certainly true that the large gas-guzzling cars of prior eras are no longer as fashionable.

3. “…an adding machine and a typewriter will be part of the equipment of each pupil’s desk.  The adding machine will be run by electricity, doing a problem that takes us fifteen minutes to solve in one minute and a half.  The typewriter will be guided by wireless.”  Every laptop in use today combines the properties of the adding machine and typewriter that she foresaw–and it all works by wireless technology!  What she didn’t predict is that the reduction in time needed for arithmetic problems would be accompanied by a proportional loss of mental calculating ability!

4.  “Perhaps some girl in a boarding school will have a wireless station of her own, just outside of her window.  Some evening when lights are out, she will listen to some famous person speaking in London or Paris.”  Would she be surprised to learn that girls in boarding school, when the lights are out, not only listen to people around the globe, but actually converse with their friends and families all over the world in real time and with real video?

5.  “French, German and Spanish classes will visit countries to learn more easily the languages they are studying.”  Spring break trips abound, making this part of her fantasy a reality.

All in all, I would say that this was one prescient young scholar, and I was delighted to know her when she was in her eighties.  Her enthusiasm for progress never ended.

In 1917, the year that the United States entered World War I, the school catalogue advertised two scholarships, each worth $325.  They were earmarked for the daughters of commissioned officers of the United States Navy.  The scholarships were bequeathed to the school by Rear Admiral Nicoll Ludlow, a thirty-six-year veteran of the navy, who had died in 1915.  Ludlow gave the scholarships in honor of his wife, Frances Mary Thomas ’58.  Ludlow had married Mary Thomas in 1870; she gave birth to two children, Nicoll, Jr., in 1871 and Mary in 1873, and died shortly after Mary’s birth.

Admiral Ludlow entered the United States Naval Academy in 1860, and in 1863 his graduation was accelerated so that he could go on active service with the Union navy.  All together, he spent nearly four decades in active duty, almost twenty of them at sea.  His career spanned the Civil War to the Spanish-American War. 

In 1897 Ludlow remarried.  His new wife, Mary McLean, was extremely well connected.  Her sister was married to Admiral George Dewey, the hero of Manila Bay.  Her father, Washington, and, later, her brother, John, were proprietors of The Washington Post.  Her nephew, Ned, was married to Evalyn Walsh McLean, the Denver socialite to whom he had given the Hope diamond.  (Ned’s son, Neddie, would briefly marry Gloria Hatrick, who, after their divorce, married the actor Jimmy Stewart.)  For a decade Ludlow apparently enjoyed the social life that marriage to Mary McLean brought him.  However, in 1908 the couple separated; he told reporters that he wanted to live in the country, and she did not.  When he died in 1915, the wife he remembered in his will was the wife of his youth, Troy Female Seminary graduate Frances Mary Thomas. 

The scholarship he left in her honor is still available today.

There is an annual conversation, and annual grumbling, among students–and some staff–about the celebration of Memorial Day on Mount Ida.  The day has not been a holiday at Emma Willard for years and years, in large part because graduation comes so quickly on its heels.  This was not always the case, however.  In the late nineteenth century, according to faculty meeting minutes, the school administration, in consultation with the faculty, decided each year whether or not to make it a day off.  In 1900, for example, they decided not to hold classes on Memorial Day.  The rationale:  Buffalo Bill’s Wild West show was in Troy, and nobody was likely to show up at school anyway!